syllabus

Electronic Literature is an emergent form of born-digital, experimental writing as well as an academic field with a global community of scholars and artists that support, promote, preserve and write critically about creative works. This course is a survey of the field’s evolution from floppy disks to VR and is broken into thematic modules – such as “hypertext”, “interactive games” and “recombinant poetics” – that frame certain practices of computer-writing. For each module, students will read relevant essays and creative works, as well as explore tools and practices for creative expression.

The course is designed for students to find thematic threads that excite them to creative scholarly responses. While this is not a “production” course, it is important for students to understand certain ideas through hands-on making. Students will receive training in the close-reading and analysis of works of electronic literature, as well as technical training in digital writing tools. Students will practice different forms of digital writing – blogging, experimental and collaborative fiction, multimodal and hypertext essays – that will develop critical thinking, reading, and writing skills. Shorts assignments will lead to a final digital writing project and oral presentation that explores works and/or themes in the course.

Course introduction

The course focuses on the development of both theoretical and practical skills in digital humanities. Students will learn how digital platforms can be used in research in the humanities. In the theoretical component of the course, students read academic texts on digital humanities research and do practical research on selected projects in the digital humanities. The course focuses on student active research. Students gain practical research experience as digital humanists by developing projects in ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. This knowledge base is a scientific, open access, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents creative work, research, events and actors in the field of electronic literature.

Students in the course will gain practical experience through working with one or more of the following areas:

• editing: researching, writing, and editing entries about electronic literature in the Knowledge Base
• web design and user interface development
• project planning and implementation; team-work and academic collaboration
• documentation
• visualization based research methods

This course provides a unique opportunity for students to get real-world experience working with scholars on an international research project in electronic literature and the digital humanities, and to contribute to the state of the art in these fields.

The ELMCIP Knowledge Base is based at the University of Bergen and can be accessed at http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase Contributions to the ELMCIP Knowledge Base are publicly accessible and licenced with a Creative Commons, non-commercial share-alike license (nc-sa).

Teaching Methods

There will be four hours of teaching each week for twelve weeks during the semester, split between one theoretical and one practical seminar each week. Student workload is estimated at 20 hours per week from the beginning of the semester until the exam, including during weeks without classes. This time should be spent attending classes, reading the assigned readings, completing assignments, contributing to the database projects, and gathering relevant material in the library and online (books, articles, videos, etc). If there are fewer than five students enrolled in the course, the institute can chose to reduce the hours of instruction, as per guidelines published on Mitt UiB. If this is the case, students will be able to find information about the revision of course hours at the start of the semester, before the deadline for semester registration (Sep. 1).

Assignments will be posted on Mitt UiB. UIB course page: http://www.uib.no/course/DIKULT207

Course introduction

The course focuses on the development of both theoretical and practical skills in digital humanities. Students will learn how digital platforms can be used in research in the humanities. In the theoretical component of the course, students read academic texts on digital humanities research and do practical research on selected projects in the digital humanities. The course focuses on student active research. Students gain practical research experience as digital humanists by developing projects in ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. This knowledge base is a scientific, open access, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents creative work, research, events and actors in the field of electronic literature.

Students in the course will gain practical experience through working with one or more of the following areas:

• editing: researching, writing, and editing entries about electronic literature in the Knowledge Base
• web design and user interface development
• project planning and implementation; team-work and academic collaboration
• documentation
• visualization based research methods

This course provides a unique opportunity for students to get real-world experience working with scholars on an international research project in electronic literature and the digital humanities, and to contribute to the state of the art in these fields.

The ELMCIP Knowledge Base is based at the University of Bergen and can be accessed at http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase Contributions to the ELMCIP Knowledge Base are publicly accessible and licenced with a Creative Commons, non-commercial share-alike license (nc-sa). Teaching Methods There will be four hours of teaching each week for twelve weeks during the semester, split between one theoretical and one practical seminar each week. Student workload is estimated at 20 hours per week from the beginning of the semester until the exam, including during weeks without classes. This time should be spent attending classes, reading the assigned readings, completing assignments, contributing to the database projects, and gathering relevant material in the library and online (books, articles, videos, etc). If there are fewer than five students enrolled in the course, the institute can chose to reduce the hours of instruction, as per guidelines published on Mitt UiB. If this is the case, students will be able to find information about the revision of course hours at the start of the semester, before the deadline for semester registration (Sep. 1). Class meetings are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 14.15-16:00 in Sydneshaugen skole, Datalab 124. Assignments will be posted on Mitt UiB. UIB course page: http://www.uib.no/course/DIKULT207

Course introduction

The course focuses on the development of both theoretical and practical skills in digital humanities. Students will learn how digital platforms can be used in research in the humanities. In the theoretical component of the course, students read academic texts on digital humanities research and do practical research on selected projects in the digital humanities. The course focuses on student active research. Students gain practical research experience as digital humanists by developing projects in ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base. This knowledge base is a scientific, open access, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents creative work, research, events and actors in the field of electronic literature.

Students in the course will gain practical experience through working with one or more of the following areas:

• editing: researching, writing, and editing entries about electronic literature in the Knowledge Base
• web design and user interface development
• web design and user interface development
• project planning and implementation; team-work and academic collaboration
• documentation
• visualization based research methods

This course provides a unique opportunity for students to get real-world experience working with scholars on an international research project in electronic literature and the digital humanities, and to contribute to the state of the art in these fields.

The ELMCIP Knowledge Base is based at the University of Bergen and can be accessed at http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase

Contributions to the ELMCIP Knowledge Base are publicly accessible and licenced with a Creative Commons, non-commercial share-alike license (nc-sa).

Teaching Methods
There will be four hours of teaching each week for twelve weeks during the semester, split between one theoretical and one practical seminar each week.

Student workload is estimated at 20 hours per week from the beginning of the semester until the exam, including during weeks without classes. This time should be spent attending classes, reading the assigned readings, completing assignments, contributing to the database projects, and gathering relevant material in the library and online (books, articles, videos, etc).

If there are fewer than five students enrolled in the course, the institute can chose to reduce the hours of instruction, as per guidelines published on Mi Side. If this is the case, students will be able to find information about the revision of course hours at the start of the semester, before the deadline for semester registration (Feb. 1).

Class meetings are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 14.15-16:00 in HF 265. Assignments will be posted on Mi Side.

UIB course page: http://www.uib.no/course/DIKULT207

Students work with scholars on the development and editing of the ELMCIP Knowledge Base for Electronic Literature. The Knowledge Base is a scholarly, relational database programmed in Drupal that documents works, events and actors in the field of electronic literature. In addition to participating in practical project-based work with an established team of senior and junior researchers, students will read scholarship on digital humanities as a field and will explore and read articles discussing selected digital humanities projects.

Students in the course gain practical experience through working with one or more of the following areas, to be agreed upon with the research team according to individual students¿ skillsets and interests:

• editing: researching, writing, and editing entries about electronic literature in the Knowledge Base.
• development: working on the Drupal backend to the Knowledge Base in collaboration with other project team members, either conceptually or taking part in the programming according to the student's prior skills
• web design and user interface development
• project planning and implementation; team work and collaboration in academia
• documentation

University of Bergen course in Electronic Literature, taught in Fall 2012 by Fulbright lecturer Leonardo Flores.

Electronic literature is literary fiction and poetry created for the computer and the network. Genres of electronic literature, while focused on poetics, have connections to other forms of digital culture such as network art and computer games. In this course, students will read works of electronic literature as for instance hypertext fiction, digital poetry, and interactive fiction. Students will also study theoretical and critical studies of electronic literature.

Creative practice is an important component of the course, and all students will participate in the production of collaborative work of electronic literature, either created from scratch as a website or similar, or modifying an existing work of electronic literature. The necessary technical skills will be taught as needed. Students will also receive practical training in analyzing electronic literature, in particular in analysis of how the elements common in electronic literature, such as images, motion, time and space and interactivity influence the text of experience and reader experience, and how this also complicates our understanding of traditional narrative and poetry.